


make this blood taste like love

by lookoutlovers



Category: SKAM (France)
Genre: Angst, Falling In Love, M/M, Pining, Vampires, eliott is a vampire, happy ending tho bcs i am weak, lucas is not, u see their problem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:47:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24574048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lookoutlovers/pseuds/lookoutlovers
Summary: it’s not love, or at least it shouldn’t be. and lucas is okay with that, he is. red is just a colour he is merely partial to.
Relationships: Eliott Demaury/Lucas Lallemant
Comments: 32
Kudos: 222





	make this blood taste like love

**Author's Note:**

> sorry for the low caps disaster, i didn't actually intend on posting this anywhere until i was too far into it to bother fixing it. i hope u enjoy nevertheless 🖤
> 
> (there are brief mentions of death and blood here but it’s nothing too in depth)

lucas wakes to the coldness of bare sheets, porcelain white reflected in the pale moonlight. he blinks against the darkness, the haze in his head, hands fisted into the covers. eliott is gone, he notes. it shouldn’t necessarily come as a shock. that happens, most nights, every night that he comes over.

a soft creaking sound can be heard from the other room. lucas stands to it, throwing on a hoodie and padding blindly through the dark of the apartment until he reaches the living room. 

shadows frame the body of a boy who isn’t really a boy, there. lucas blinks, watching as he sits out on the ledge of the small balcony, window propped open with an old broom.

the slight breeze travels, thinly, four a.m. curling around lucas’ ankles like a ghost, unsettling to the touch.

“hey,” he calls, taking a few steps closer. “come back inside.”

eliott turns, movements delayed like he hadn’t heard lucas speak, or hadn’t wanted to. he looks at lucas, a bit like he’s looking straight through him. lucas takes another small step forward, blinking away the traces of sleep that still linger. then eliott looks away, back out over the city. lucas almost leaves, when another minute stretches and still nothing is said. but then eliott is sighing, and he stands, climbing back into the apartment. the window shuts behind him.

“couldn’t sleep again?” he asks lucas. his voice is scratchy. it sends a shiver down the length of lucas’ spine.

“not really. you?” he realises the ill-thought behind the question as soon as it slips between them. eliott only lets out a breathy laugh. he’s said it before, too many times, _vampires don’t need sleep, lucas._ it’s not that lucas forgets, necessarily, it’s just that he gets distracted, mostly, by the way eliott looks at him and the way that he doesn’t. “right. yeah.”

“i like the view from your window,” eliott whispers, offtopic, “you can see everything from there.”

lucas only hums. the distance between them seems to disappear, the pull too severe to ignore, consuming like a midnight tide. lucas looks down, eyes focused on the peculiar picture their feet make there — lucas’ bare ones next to eliott’s black boots. it makes him want to cry, stupidly, how it’s just another reminder of what they can never be.

they stand in the darkness, not saying much until lucas urges quietly, “come back to bed.”

“i should probably go.”

an ache twists in lucas’ chest.

“don’t. please.”

he looks up at eliott, then, their eyes meeting in a soft explosion of grey. the shadows that live under eliott’s eyes are like a bruise, only they never really seem to fade, stubborn things they are. lucas wishes he could make him sleep, then maybe things would be easier. eliott sighs. lucas reaches out to place a hand to his chest, there is nothing there, when he does, no movements, no thump. he doesn’t know why it shocks him so much, again, like most things surrounding eliott, he knows this already. _we aren’t the same._

a hand covers lucas’ own. it’s cold like death is. lucas almost pulls away, but doesn’t. instead tilts his head back, licks his lips, a selfish kind of plea that he knows no matter what eliott says will always surpass the dangers of this. of them.

“lucas,” eliott exhales sharply. “we can’t.”

it goes unsaid, how the living shouldn’t mix with the undead. it isn’t what he had preached just a few hours ago, lucas thinks, when he had lucas underneath him, shaking, panting, _quivering._

“i don’t care,” lucas says, stubbornly.

“you should. i’m no good for you.”

lucas shakes his head, adamant. eliott’s hand is still cold in his, the phantom chill of wind still lingers within the apartment. lucas’ toes curl.

“i said i don’t care.”

lucas kisses him — his lips are cold too, metallic tasting, his skin rough under lucas’ fingertips — and, lucas doesn’t care, not at all, eliott kisses him right back.

four a.m. stretches thinly, morphs into five, and then six. they don’t sleep, not come seven, nor eight. they never really do.

  
  
  


(the thing about eliott demaury is that he is always showing up, unprompted, unforeseen, everywhere.

the first time — a dark alley, midnight pushing against its narrow walls, music spilling out from the club adjacent. eliott smells like marlboro gold and not much else, and when he kisses lucas it’s intoxicating. the second — at the bus stop lucas waits at after his late shifts. the third, and then the fourth and fifth, until lucas loses count, until he starts to seek eliott out, too.

and that’s how it starts, how the flame ignites. two boys, although one not really a boy, who tend to find each other in the night. because eliott sleeps backwards, and lucas can never sleep anyway, either. so it sort of just works. they walk together over gloomy cobblestone and back to lucas’ place, most nights, and sometimes they talk, other times eliott kisses and sinks into him until he’s seeing stars.

it’s not love, or at least it shouldn’t be. and lucas is okay with that, he is. red is just a colour he is merely partial to.

because if blood tasted anything like love, it would poison.)

  
  
  


lucas’ bare feet kick against the kitchen cupboards from where he’s sat on the counter. the record player in the other room is hissing softly, but eliott doesn’t move to change it, so neither does lucas.

“well this is nice,” lucas had said, two hours ago, precisely, when eliott first let him in. “not really what i expected.”

eliott had huffed out a laugh. “and what did you expect?”

“i don’t know, a creepy old house in the middle of nowhere. more cobwebs, probably.”

moonlight now spills in through the kitchen window in bits and pieces, vague shadows falling over the table and walls. eliott’s apartment is oddly normal, too normal for what he truly is. there are three rooms — a kitchen that stretches into a living room, a bedroom, and a bathroom. there are drawings taped to the walls, dusty records stacked into a worn bookshelf, a battered copy of _to the lighthouse_ on the paint stained coffee table.

it is assertively normal, as though done on purpose.

lucas doesn’t comment on it any further.

light remains scant while eliott cooks, pancakes that burn slightly on one side. at the kitchen table lucas eats but eliott doesn’t. instead he watches lucas from across the table, his face adorned in a silvery glow. light and shadows frame him exquisitely, sharpening his cheekbones and his jawline, the obscure grey of his eyes, catching onto the dull silver of his rings. it’s something saintly, yet similarly sinful.

lucas _aches._

after, eliott takes lucas to his bedroom, not to sleep, because that’s not something they do, not at this hour at least. instead he presses him into the mattress and kisses him deep, kisses him breathless. it’s a countless affair by now, the first time at eliott’s but weeks have past since the first time at lucas’. lucas doesn’t know how many times they’ve stumbled home together when the hours are slight, but he knows it’s enough for eliott to have learnt the map of his skin, the places that send lucas into a downward spiral. 

enough that since that night — _i’m no good for you. i said i don’t care_ — eliott has stopped trying to restrain the force of them.

tonight he goes slow. takes lucas apart then builds him back up again like it’s something sweet, something to be savoured. he kisses over lucas’ chest, cloyingly, honey dripping and sticking. then he takes lucas into his mouth, slow and then unrelenting, _shivering._ lucas’ stomach coils, and his breath shudders while eliott eases him through it.

he kisses him again after. that same sweetness from before gets stuck in between lucas’ teeth and in his lungs like sugar or poison or something as equally difficult to decipher. 

lucas blinks it away, the subjective loveliness of it all, and instead wraps his hand around eliott until he too is whining, panting into the warm length of lucas’ neck.

and later, as they lie together between the sheets, eliott humming a soft tune into the musty air, lucas thinks he could get used to this. and he shouldn’t, really. he shouldn’t think that way when what they have runs on empty time and promises, but that can’t really be helped. his heart is made from things that are far too intricate and complex to be able to shut it off.

so perhaps lucas is falling. perhaps it’s an evolving thing. perhaps it’s nothing at all.

either way, he thinks if he did fall — he would do so severely.

“you’re pretty, you know.”

lucas’ fingers run faintly over the ridges of eliott’s ribs, the dip where they cut off. the words sort of leave him incidentally, but the thing is, he is. eliott is pretty, achingly pretty. he’s pretty like an eclipse is, look at the wrong time and it blinds you. he’s pretty in a way that gets caught inside lucas’ chest and pulls and tugs and unravels, in a way that causes a mayhem to spill between his lungs.

“i’m cold,” eliott responds thinly.

lucas looks up, hand lying flat over eliott’s chest. “you always are,” he points out.

“i hate it.” it’s not an uncommon confession, he’s voiced it before — _i hate being this way_ — many times.

lucas just smiles at him sadly, knows that no matter what he says, or thinks — _i like you just the way you are_ — it won’t change eliott’s mind.

none of it would change the fact that eliott is an undead and he hates it, that lucas is entirely human and he hates that too.

“hey,” he whispers instead, “you know it doesn’t matter to me, right?”

“i know,” eliott says back, his eyes are tired. “but it should.”

“but it doesn’t.”

outside, dawn is beginning to crawl up the sky. a haze of gold peaking through the small gap in the curtains. lucas will probably have to leave soon, eliott will most likely get hungry — something he is yet to let lucas see.

it’s for a reason lucas thinks he already knows the answer to. 

“yeah.” when eliott speaks his tone is low. “that’s the problem.”

  
  
  


(lucas is intrigued. see, there’s something about eliott that works like a drug — his eyes and his lips and his mouth. but also his laugh and his smile and his horrible cooking; the devastating way he utters lucas’ name.

admittedly, lucas always been sort of timid when it comes to the dark, but with eliott things are different because he acts like the dark is something that you consume, rather than it being something you are consumed _by._

which is new and exciting, and not what lucas is used to at all.

but, lately, he’s learning that things shift, and like the ocean, life is unpredictable and surprising.

and that maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

but he’s also learning that there are things that people go through that you may never understand no matter how hard you try. and eliott is a question mark beneath a story that’s still untold, he’s swimming within the explanation behind the universe, phenomena that is yet to find its meaning.

and much like in the unfathomable way that the universe expands, lucas’ heart has an inclination, and it’s growing despite his efforts. yet it doesn’t frighten him as much as it perhaps should, because lying next to eliott feels safe in ways nothing else ever has, and lucas is just a mere human, weak to things that make his chest ache.)

  
  
  
  


by late dusk eliott has usually already fed and lucas can taste it like metal on his tongue, and he knows that eliott kisses him harder just to get rid of the flavour of it. he knows how much he hates it.

he explains why, one night, while they’re sat on the ledge of his building top, legs dangling over the railing and skin cooling from flaming touches that still linger. they’re close enough that their shoulders press together, and lucas leans into it with every huff of wind.

“i just want to be normal,” eliott says, looking out over the city below. the stars are pale, masked by thick clouds. cars shutter past despite the fact that it’s nearing three a.m., but one thing lucas has learnt about paris all these years is that it never really sleeps. maybe that’s why eliott chooses to stay, he thinks. “there is not one part of me that’s normal,” eliott continues, ”and i hate it.”

lucas wants to reach out and hold his hand, but something settles over eliott’s face that lucas can’t read, so he doesn’t. instead he folds his arms over his own chest, a tact to block out the cold.

“i think —” he says. eliott looks at him, his face paled by the shivery moonlight, his eyes grey in a way that’s almost bottomless. “— that what you are is beautiful.”

eliott only huffs at the words, brushing them off. “why aren’t you afraid of me?” he asks suddenly.

this time lucas’ hand does find eliott’s, he flinches at the slight touch, but he doesn’t pull away, so lucas keeps it there, says, “well — because you’re _you,”_ and he means it entirely. because it’s just that easy, isn’t it?

lucas wants to say, _because i think i might love you,_ but it feels too inadequate, after all these months, to utter something so meagre.

because the way lucas feels — it’s so much more.

“i’m me,” eliott repeats in a whisper, lips pursed. “and you’re you.”

“yeah,” lucas breathes. when their eyes meet lucas feels a storm erupt in his chest. there’s a small smile tugging at eliott’s lips. “and we’re good together, don’t you think?”

looking down at their hands, now interlaced, eliott squeezes, and in some way it feels like a beginning of sorts, a defining of something meaningful.

“i’m trying,” eliott says, “to accept that this is the way i am, that we’ll never be the same, not unless —“ he pauses, shaking his head as if to rid himself of the thought. “i’m trying, because you’re — you’re _you_. you’re everything. and i can only hope that it’s enough, to try.”

“it’s more than enough,” lucas says, his heart flailing in his chest.

their foreheads press together. a breeze catches them gingerly. below, the lights of the city flicker absently. eliott kisses lucas and the world comes to a stop, despite the fact it’s not even the first time, nor the fiftieth. the thousandth, maybe. lucas has lost count.

they kiss, on the edge of a rooftop, and it says more than it probably should, the way eliott kisses him deeper than he ever has before. it makes lucas’ breath hitch, his toes curl. when he pulls back he adorns it with a press of lips to lucas’ forehead, a gesture filled with so much affection it causes hearts to ache.

and their hearts, they may not beat for the same reasons, but lucas reckons that doesn’t matter much at all. 

or at least they can try and not let it matter.

  
  
  


(winter takes hold of paris in a relentless grip, swallowing the city in a dark gloom. it rains, one day, and then it doesn’t stop for three weeks straight. the moon waxes and wanes, and time begins to feel like a thing that lucas has similarly too much yet not enough of.

nights stretch, come november, and so their moments together collect minutes, hours, with daylight so scant.

it still isn’t love, or they believe that it still shouldn’t be. but lucas wonders, sometimes, if maybe there’s something about the way eliott looks at him that says more, in the absence of light. but maybe it’s just that, lucas thinks, the absence of light.

love, it’s an easy thing to misinterpret, after all, perhaps as easy as it is to catch.

they try and not let it matter but it does. the blatant reminder that they’re made up of entirely different parts is in too many things, and eliott falls into an inward battle of sorts, one lucas doesn’t quite understand.

but they continue to try. so maybe that’s enough. 

_i can only hope that it’s enough.)_

  
  
  


eliott is struggling with a bottle of pills. which is a new thing — the pills, the weekly visits to a doctor on the far side of the city.

he smells a lot like what lucas thinks perhaps death does.

lucas has only ever been to a funeral once and he was ten years old. but he remembers the distinct coldness of the graveyard, the sharp silence that transpired unspokenly, perhaps out of fear that something might wake. he supposes the smell of such would be an unpleasant one, a bit like that feeling of standing in that graveyard, withering.

“eliott. sweetheart,” lucas tries softly, reaching out, “let me help.”

“no, just —“ eliott exhales sharply, shutting his eyes. “i can do it.”

he’s weaker than lucas has ever seen him. his skin paper to the touch. eventually his grip on the bottle loosens and lucas takes it from him, unscrewing the lid. he hands eliott one of the pills, then watches as he swallows it dry.

“thank you,” eliott says after, shoulders sunken.

the pills are set aside onto the kitchen counter. lucas’ hand finds eliott’s left cheek, thumb tracing over the thinned purple under his eyes. “let’s lie down,” he suggests gently. “you’re exhausted.” _you’re fading._

lucas wonders when the last time he fed actually was, with how pale he’s gotten lately.

eliott nods absently, then lets lucas walk him to the bedroom. the curtains are pulled when they enter, like they mostly are, and lucas wraps his entire body around eliott’s until there is no part of them that isn’t connected.

they lie there for hours. eliott drifts but lucas remains alert. after a while sunrise claws at the window panes, another reminder that time is thin. but eliott doesn’t wake, not as noon approaches, nor when afternoon hits. so lucas stays.

eventually exhaustion catches up to him, his grip on eliott’s waist from behind relaxing. and sleep, when it comes, is consuming.

when lucas wakes it’s to eliott now facing him, blinking slowly. the room is smeared in grey, and a cautious silence hangs over them until eliott breaks it softly.

“did you sleep well?”

there’s a lilt of concern underlying his tone, and lucas’ heart beats unevenly.

“i slept,” lucas answers vaguely. the _well_ gets lost, because it wouldn’t be the truth. eliott seems to understand this, he nods gently, hair static against the pillowcase.

there’s a lot lucas wants to say, but again, like most things, verbs get caught, nouns feel too heavy. instead he reaches out, hand fitting into the dip of eliott’s waist, a warm touch against bitter skin. eliott shuffles closer, too close. their foreheads touch and a shiver runs down lucas’ spine, faint like the breath of a ghost. and he has no idea what time it is, but that doesn’t matter when eliott looks at him the way he does.

“i’m trying,” eliott mutters, so quietly it’s almost lost to the sound of lucas’ breathing. it’s a gentle reminder, tenderly spoken and it’s enough. of course it is.

lucas pulls him into a kiss, one that’s soft and tentative and loving. eliott kisses back languidly — it’s shuddering, _shivering._ moonlight pales in comparison to the pretty glint in eliott’s eyes when they separate briefly, and his lips are pulled into a sweet smile.

“i know,” lucas whispers, _i know you are._

eliott’s lips begin to wander, and lucas’ breath spills out in broken clauses. and here, in a room buried beneath the gloomy folds of paris, a mere smudge of charcoal within a much bigger picture, lucas falls.

  
  
  


(“you haven’t been feeding.”

“it makes me feel inhuman.”

“but you’re not —” _you’re not human._

“i wish i was.”)

  
  
  


there’s a girl in eliott’s apartment. she’s sitting on the counter when lucas arrives one night, her hair like sand and her smile wide and toothy.

“so you’re lucas,” she says, feet knocking at the cupboards like lucas’ often do.

lucas blinks, looking over at eliott idly, something strange twisting in his chest. eliott doesn’t look up from the stove — pancakes, again.

“yes,” lucas responds eventually, stepping further into the kitchen.

“i’m daphné.” she holds out her hand, her touch is cold, although it’s welcoming still.

“daphné is also a vampire,” eliott provides vaguely, still too focused on making sure the pancakes don’t burn to look up.

“okay. yeah,” lucas breathes, “that’s cool,” and he tries not to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

“i’ve heard lots about you,” daphné says, “eliott never shuts up about you, i swear—“

_“—daphy.”_

“—it’s always lucas this, lucas that. lucas has the most beautiful eyes, you have no idea, and he’s so kind, so—“

“okay, that’s enough,” eliott interrupts again, stepping forward to place a hand over daphné’s mouth.

lucas bites down onto the inside of his cheek, suppressing a laugh, watching the scene unfold with amusement. he tries not to let the thought transpire too deep, the thought that eliott talks about him, like that, to his friends. it’s a bit surreal. lucas would rather not dwell on what it means.

when daphné leaves she presses a kiss to eliott’s cheek, and ruffles lucas’ hair on the way past. at the door she pauses, and looking at lucas she points to a large cardboard box on the table. “make sure he drinks those.” lucas looks over, plastic blood bags, dozens of them. he nods. and then, like a storm, leaving dust in her wake, she’s gone.

lucas purses his lips, smirking lightly. he decidedly doesn’t mention the blood bags. “so you talk about me a lot then?”

_“—don’t.”_

the laugh that escapes lucas is delightful.

  
  
  


(“what are you most afraid of?”

“right now?”

“mhm.”

“i don’t want to be alone.”)

  
  
  


eliott makes his way through the blood bags but he still never lets lucas see. out of shame, lucas suspects, although he’s told eliott plenty of times that it doesn’t bother him, that it wouldn’t change anything.

still, eliott asks for privacy and so lucas obliges. he knows that it’s just a part of eliott that both of them must learn how to accept. he’s just glad that as the days go by eliott becomes less and less frail, that daphné returns weekly with a new cardboard box — a new way to embarrass eliott and make lucas laugh.

the thing is, lucas hadn’t realised how good things had been until darkness crashed against them. but now things are better, and eliott lets more of his heart show with each day — night — that goes by.

it shows in subtle things, like when he does something as insanely romantic as peel an orange for lucas under the moonlight, juices dripping from his chin as eliott feeds it to him lovingly.

the twenty-four-seven grocery store that he visits when there’s no light at all. then, with ingredients that can only be laughed at, how he cooks for lucas — pancakes, usually, of some form or shape — despite the fact that he can never have any himself.

saying things like, _i’m trying,_ and, _you’re everything._

when he tells his friends about lucas.

the light in his eyes when their skin touches and that flame ignites.

all of these things — they’re achingly stirring like a heart attack. they fracture out all of the things that stand against them and paint things in a new light. a light that doesn’t frighten eliott off. luacs takes these things, these quiet moments of affection, and he holds them so close to his chest it burns.

he tells himself, one night — there’s a half empty bottle of red wine on the coffee table. eliott’s lips are stained a deep mauve, his eyes look almost blue and when he kisses lucas it feels like coming home — and lucas tells himself, _i’ll die before i let this go._

  
  
  


(sometimes eliott’s teeth graze his neck, but he’d never bite. lucas thinks about it, sometimes, a lot, becoming immortal — _an undead._ he thinks perhaps it wouldn’t be such a terrible thing, to be stuck here in this age, this time, with eliott.

other times, lucas is so afraid that the way he loves eliott is so obvious it might scare him off.

thoughts like that get shoved down quickly, six feet under dirt.)

  
  
  


winter fades. christmas day, or the night that follows, is spent on that rooftop of eliott’s building. lucas brings the speaker his mother had gifted him and he plays music that they dance to slowly under a blanket of ill-defined stars.

january passes and february too, and when march comes the days drag on longer, sunlight too prevalent of a thing.

the meaning of what they are has always been thin, a flimsy thing that neither of them are brave enough to touch. they’ve never found a fitting enough term for it, but he guesses it is a relationship of sorts. because they hold hands and they kiss and they say things like, _i don’t think i could live without you._ and there’s not much else you can attribute that to.

it’s a late spring evening when lucas arrives at eliott’s apartment with a handful of wildflowers picked from the grass between two pathways, the names of which, scientifically: daucus carota, centaurea cyanus, viola riviniana — all pretty despite their chaos.

eliott beams when lucas presents them, fussing to fill a vase with water and then placing them on the coffee table.

“do you like them?” lucas asks.

for a few moments eliott ponders, his gaze fixed on the bright colour the flowers make against the dull of his apartment. eventually he looks up, there’s a strange look on his face when he shrugs. “they make me think of daylight.”

lucas almost says _i’m sorry,_ but he catches the idiom before it can escape him. “do you miss it?” he says instead.

“i don’t really remember what it’s like.”

“it’s — you’re not missing much.”

eliott huffs out a laugh.

“it’s better like this anyway,” lucas gestures in the vague direction of the window, nighttime now fallen. “with you.”

he doesn’t get a response. at least not one that’s spoken. eliott picks up one of the flowers, an ocean blue coloured one, and he tucks it neatly behind lucas’ ear. then, taking his hand, he drags them out of the apartment.

the streets of paris are dark, most shops have shut but the more illicit ones stay open, neon signs spilling colour over the pavement, forming lines like brushstrokes. eliott’s hand is still in his as they walk in a direction lucas decides not to prod at.

they stop by an old building. its walls are peeling, grey and stained, almost paper thin. eliott wedges the door open. it feels a lot like trespassing, but lucas doesn’t mention it. instead he lets eliott lead him up a staircase that unsettles under the patter of their feet, up and up, until they reach another door which opens out into a wide rooftop.

there’s not much difference between this particular rooftop and eliott’s back home, but lucas figures he just enjoys the high views, so he keeps the thought to himself.

midnight curls around them in a soft breeze, one that is still laced with the lingering heat of sun. they stand close at the edge of the building top, toes inches from where stone angles downwards, and it feels weirdly freeing, in a way, to look down at the wide expanse of the city as though it’s their kingdom.

“do you know,” eliott is first to break the silence, the first thing said since leaving eliott’s place, “that you make me feel more alive than anything ever has.”

there’s something rather hopeful in the intonation. lucas turns to face him, hands shaking at his sides, the air between them feels heavy.

“i’ve fallen in love with you.” eliott’s voice is strained, as though pushing past his own resolve, like he’s trying to break down a wall. but when he looks at lucas his features soften, and instantly lucas can tell how long the confession has been eating away at him, decaying his insides.

and just like that lucas digs up all those thoughts from before, dirt getting stuck under his fingernails, stubbornly.

 _“eliott,”_ he shudders. his heart is beating so rapidly it starts to chafe, pressing against his ribs until it hurts just to breathe. and then it’s too much, spilling over, out of his chest, over the hard ground, a mess of red. perhaps it’s the kind of colour that will stain floorboards, sink between the wooden cracks. perhaps eliott will be there to pick it all back up.

it’s devastating, to look at someone and know that they have the ability to completely ruin you. but lucas is far beyond the point in which caring about that would make much of a difference anyway.

he’s already fallen too deep, too hard.

“but i shouldn’t love you,” eliott continues, “because you’re you and i’m me. i shouldn’t love you because i’ll never be able to give you what you deserve, because we aren’t the same, because i’m like this and there’s nothing i can do to change it. i shouldn’t love you, lucas, but i do. i love you so much it hurts.”

“it doesn’t have to hurt,” lucas says.

“i know,” eliott whispers back, his eyes are wet. he smiles sadly. “but it does.”

lucas closes the distance between them, hands cupping eliott’s cheeks. “is that a bad thing?” he asks tentatively, bottom lip worried between his teeth.

eliott’s eyes flutter shut, eyelashes casting wispy shadows against his pale skin. their breathing fuses, ice and fire, warm and cold. eliott’s arms wrap around lucas’ waist, gathering him up, holding him close. lucas has never felt something so intensely as he does with the words eliott utters next.

“the ache — it makes me feel human.”

  
  
  


“you can’t change the way you are,” lucas says, much later, bed sheets devouring them in shadows. “but i can.”

the insinuation is sharp and unmistakable, and eliott is shaking his head.

“lucas—“

“no, i’m serious.” _i don’t want to be alone._

“are you—“ eliott sits up in the bed, sheet falling down to his lap. a sharp slant of moonlight falls over his shoulder, and it’s desirable in a way that never grows old. eliott’s got a pretty kind of darkness about him that’s acquaintable by now, although when a certain sort of light catches his skin, it sends lucas into a different kind of inner turmoil. and he’s so in love it _burns._ eliott exhales. “you have to be one hundred percent certain.”

“i am,” lucas says firmly. the truth is he’s never been more certain about anything in his entire life. “i love you.”

eliott squeezes his hand, seems to let the weight of the admission dig a hole in him. and then he’s nodding. “okay.”

  
  
  
  
  


(things, they die, but nothing ever really stays dead unless you let it. things die, and like eliott, they come back to life. 

lucas lallemant is twenty one years old — today, tomorrow, a hundred years from now. eliott demaury, twenty three — today, yesterday, a hundred years ago. 

daphné comes weekly, still, only now she brings two cardboard boxes, twice as many blood bags. now, when they eat, they do so together, their socked feet knocking under the kitchen table, grins sharp and toothy. flowers wilt when they’re put in places that sunlight can’t reach, but when night falls lucas goes out and picks new ones. love doesn’t hurt like it used to, it stops rotting their insides and instead it unfurls into something that blooms. lucas doesn’t miss the sunlight like eliott was worried he would, instead he thrives under the moonlight, and when the sun slips into the horizon, the city really does become their kingdom.

it’s something exquisite, how they both, two undeads, have never felt more alive.)

  
  
  
  


(red, it’s the colour of love and it’s the colour of blood. the colour roses are, the wine that spills over their coffee table. it’s the colour that stains their teeth and fills their lungs.

it’s the colour that consumes them.)

**Author's Note:**

> thank u for reading! find me on tumblr [@lumierelovers](https://lumierelovers.tumblr.com/)


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